The trend in modern office furnishing is towards a decor featuring clean lines, unobstructed surfaces, and functionally uncluttered space. Unfortunately this idealistic concept cannot coexist with reality, for, when real people are seriously at work, mounds of paper tend to accumulate on all available horizontal surfaces, creating the appearance of unfunctional clutter. At one time, the roll-top desk served admirably with its array of pigeonholes for the short-term storage, segregation, and ordering of letter correspondence and like current-interest material requiring frequent, retrievable access. But now, the roll-top desk has been relegated to the museum and the antique shop, and there is a pressing need for a functional equivalent of the pigeonhole. The traditional in-and-out box of the type generally found on the secretary's desk and on the executive's desk, which comprises a plurality of bulky, open-top, letter-size, rectangular boxes, arranged in a spaced vertical tier, and supported by four corner posts, provides, at best, a poor substitute for but a few of the many functions of the pigeonhole array.
Attempts to modernize and improve the in-and-out box have resulted in minor changes, changes that are cosmetic rather than functional. Such changes are commonly characterized by the use of free-form molding technique with fiber-glass reinforced plastic and like material of high structural strength to eliminate corner posts and side-walls so as to produce an integral structure in which a tier of spaced-apart letter-size trays are cantilevered from a single end support.
Office-furnishing consultants and designers consider such free-form paper valets cumbersome, unwieldy, unsightly, and aesthetically distasteful. Instead, they specify low-silhouette, adjacently-paired, open-top, letter-size, rectangular boxes for desk-top use, or, preferably, provide separate drawers, hidden within the desk, for holding incoming and outgoing correspondence and other business material of current interest.
A recurring problem with paper valets, both modern and traditional, as well as with the hidden drawers, is that these devices are all designed to accommodate sheet material of a pre-specified maximum size, be it letter-size or legal size. Oversize material, such as accounting ledger sheets, time sheets, scheduling sheets, computer print-outs, specification sheets, and drawings cannot be accomodated readily without folding. And, when such oversize material is squeezed into an existing paper valet, the ends generally overhang the confines, presenting a generally sloppy appearance and increasing the likelihood of spillage.
To reduce the likelihood of spillage, a pile of papers in a paper valet is normally held down with a paperweight. The paperweight is also used to prevent scattering of a pile of papers placed on the desk-top for future reference.
The spindle, which was the familiar companion of the roll-top desk, provided a convenient repository for the temporary storage of special items and small papers such as bills, memoranda, and the like which might become lost in the pigeonholes. Nowadays, the sharp spike end of the spindle makes it too hazardous for general office use. More compelling than any safety reason, or aesthetic reason, is the use of computer punch-card billing which has doomed the use of the spindle. The admonition not to punch, tear, fold, spindle, or multilate has relegated the spindle to the status of another quaint and anachronistic device to be used only by nostalgia buffs.
Nostalgic or not, the roll-top desk with its pigeonholes, and accompanying paperweights and spindle, satisfied functional needs in a manner that has not been equalled by modern desk accessories or desk-organizers.
What is needed at this time is a new and novel desk-organizer that is functionally capable of accommodating papers of any size and dimension with equal facility, that will releasably store these papers in a neat, uncluttered array without danger of spillage, and that will be compatible with, and not in conflict with, modern office furnishings.
Preferably, the desk-organizer should be unobtrusive when not being used to hold papers. It should occupy a minimum of desk space when in use. Further, the desk-organizer should be readily capable of relocation as desired on the top of the desk, preferably by the use of only one hand, as when the other hand is occupied (as by holding the telephone receiver) and immediate reference is desired without the hazard of spillage.
Summarizing these needs: the desired desk-organizer should combine all of the desirable functional features of the pigeonhole, the paperweight, and the spindle into one aesthetically pleasing structure that is compatible with modern office decor.